About the project
The project examines how the Sami child’s right to culture is ensured in a child welfare case. When the child is taken into public care, this may lead to the child losing its daily, spontaneous, and unplanned contact with the family’s culture. The public authorities have a legal obligation to ensure Sami children’s right to culture. This legal obligation has a foundation in both national and international rules, such as Article 108 of the Norwegian Constitution, Article 30 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child and Section 1-8 of the Child Welfare-act. The project seeks to investigate what this obligation entails. A central part of the project will therefore be to take a closer look at how the right to culture influences, and should influence, key issues in child welfare cases. Examples of such key issues are placement (where the child is to live), contact arrangements (with whom, the extent, and the type of contact), and any cultural support measures (for example: language training in the foster home). The project further seeks to analyze how the right to culture for Sami children is affected by the child being a member of an indigenous group.
Goals
There is limited legal research on the right to culture for Sami families in a child welfare case. The aim of the project is therefore to contribute with both legal doctrinal and empirical knowledge to the topic. The following research methods will be used to achieve this aim:
- Legal dogmatic examination of the legal rules governing the right to culture and the key decisions in child welfare cases.
- Examining case law from Child Welfare Tribunal (“barneverns- og helsenemnda”) as well as the district court and the court of appeal.
- Qualitative examination of case documents in 3-6 cases from four selected municipalities in Norway. The child welfare service currently makes several decisions that greatly affect Sami children's right to culture in practice. To examine how the right to culture is interpreted and applied today, it is therefore of interest to examine the child welfare service's assessments in relation to placement, visitation rights, and cultural needs/measures after taking children into care.
- Interviews with employees in the child welfare services. It may vary whether/to what extent the assessment related to culture is documented in writing. To supplement the qualitative study of case documents in selected municipalities it is therefore relevant to conduct interviews with child welfare service employees in the same municipalities as the examination of case documents.
- Study of material submitted to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerning Sami families' experiences with child welfare services.
Funding
The project is financed by the University of Oslo.